Conversational UI: Talking Loud And Saying Plenty
The evolution of messaging platforms and the rise of chatbots represent a paradigm shift in our always-on world.
Software is eating the world. That’s what famed venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said in a Wall Street Journal article in 2011. Fast forward five years, and it’s clear that he was correct: Software is, indeed, ubiquitous. But not all software is equal. Messaging apps are experiencing a meteoric rise above all others.
According to Flurry, a mobile analytics firm, messaging app sessions saw a 103% rise globally as far back as 2014, and sustained a 51% rise in 2015. General-purpose chat app WhatsApp had 50% greater traffic than all global text message use. And Snapchat, once the domain of Millennials, now has a daily average user count of 100 million. Furthermore, 50% of the top eight downloaded apps in the U.K. are messengers, while two out of the top three are chat apps from Facebook.
And it’s not just social chatter that’s commanding such inspiring figures. WeChat, the dominant chat app in China, had more mobile transactions over the 2016 Chinese New Year than PayPal had during all of 2015. The users of Slack, the darling of the enterprise, engage with the app on average 10 hours per day during the work week.
This evolution of messaging platforms and the rise of chatbots represent a paradigm shift in our always-on world. Marketers now have the opportunity to be more plugged in to their target consumers’ conversations. And, as a business today, it is critical to understand this megatrend and respond in short order. This is the dawn of the “post app” era, and it will be as transformational for businesses and consumers as apps were a decade ago.